After enticing commuters to use its fleet of AC buses with promotional fares for the last six months, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has decided to increase the cost of tickets from Sunday. It has cited constant increase in diesel rates, rise in dearness allowance for its staff, and operational costs as the reasons behind the decision.
An average fare increase of 16.89% has been made for stages starting from 7th to 25th (each stage has a distance of approximately 2 km). However, there is no change in the fare structure till the seventh stage. The hike will hit working professionals, especially those who rely on AC buses to commute to IT corridors such as Whitefield and Electronics City.
Defending the fare revision, Transport Minister D.C. Thammanna said, “The corporation had offered promotional fares for AC services a few months ago. Owing to increased operational costs, it was inevitable for it to revise the fares. Diesel price has drastically increased and traffic congestion on the road has also resulted in increased fuel consumption. The BMTC alone is incurring a loss of ₹33 crore a month owing to these factors. This revision will not affect common people in the city. People travelling in the AC buses can afford it.”
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On January 1, 2018, the BMTC, which operates a fleet of 774 AC buses in the city, had reduced fares by between 5 and 37%, with the average at 29%. This was extended till June 30.
Mr. Thammanna reiterated that there was no talk of revising the fares for non-AC services. “Fares of ordinary services of the BMTC will not be revised. Similarly, ticket prices for buses operated by other corporations such as the KSRTC will not be revised.”
Incidentally, all the four transport corporations in the State — BMTC, KSRTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC — had recently proposed a fare revision citing increased operational costs. However, the newly formed Congress–JD(S) coalition government was not open to this proposal, and instead directed them to mobilise more resources to meet the increased operational costs.
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The BMTC, however, has not made any revision in the fares of AC buses (Vayu Vajra service) operated to Kempegowda International Airport (KIA).